How to achieve a 3D warp field effect in blender (2.81)
Thanks to the comments I finally found out about the Lattice modifier system which when you take away the physics speak is exactly what I was thinking of when I posted the original question - below is a proof of concept 'Tornado Susan' using the stock Susan model with a lattice modifier applied to flare the top and give the length a bit of a flick
And the Lattice Modifier that was applied is shown below which takes no time using proportional editing